'No data leaked from Co-WIN portal', clarifies Health Ministry

The National Health Authority (NHA) has denied any Covid-related data leak from the Co-WIN portal on a prima facie basis, saying the platform neither collects the address of people nor RT-PCR test results for vaccination, a top official said on Friday.

Cybercriminals on the dark web had posted the personal data of thousands of people, claiming they were from India.

"While we will enquire into the substance of the news, prima facie the assertion is not correct. The reason is that Co-WIN collects neither the address of the person nor the RT-PCR test results for vaccination. Further, we would like to assert that no data has leaked from Co-WIN portal and the entire data of residents is safe and secure on our platform," National Health Authority CEO R S Sharma said in a statement.

The alleged leaked data has been put on sale on the Raid Forums website where a cybercriminal claims to have personal data of over 20,000 people.

Cyber Security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia also tweeted that personally identifiable information (PII) including name and Covid-19 results are made public through a content delivery network (CDN).

He said that Google has indexed lakhs of data from the affected system.

"PII including Name, MOB, PAN, Address etc of #Covid19 #RTPCR results & #Cowin data getting public through a Govt CDN. #Google indexed almost 9 Lac public/private #GovtDocuments in search engines. Patient's data is now listed on #DarkWeb. Need fast deindex," Rajaharia said in his tweet.

The government has heavily relied on digital technologies in terms of controlling and creating awareness about the Covid-19 pandemic as also its vaccination programme. Several government departments mandate people to use the Aarogya Setu app for Covid-19 related services and information.

Rajaharia in a follow-up tweet on January 20 said that he is not reporting any vulnerability in this incident but cautioning people to remain alert from fraud calls, offers related to Covid-19, etc that they may get as their data is being sold in the dark web.

Data sold on the dark web is often exploited by cybercriminals and fraudsters for various kinds of frauds.